Thursday, 21 May 2015

A Bosnian 1905?

On 5 February 2014 anger
over factory closures in
Tuzla, Bosnia Hercegovina, spilled into the streets. Two days later, demonstrations spread to
Sarajevo, Mostar and other towns and cities. In
their wake, People's
Plenums were set up to express and give organisational strength
to this new movement. This
was taking place in a country where more
than one in four of the workforce is
without work and the average wage for those with work is less than
400 euros a month. By contrast, politicians
get 3000 euros a month. The Guardian estimated that 60% of the
country's money is spent on the political
set-up and 40% on its people. In
April 2014 I was doing
research for 'Left Field' and
visited Zagreb, Ljubljana,Mostar
and Belgrade. A month later, many of the roads I had travelled on were
under water, hit by the worst floods for centuries. An already bad
situation was now made much worse. While in Mostar, I
addressed a Plenum demonstration. (Start video at 1:20 if you don't speak the language). In
retrospect, it may seem to have been over-optimistic to have aligned
the Bosnian movement with the political undercurrents at work in
other parts of Europe. Time and the people will decide.Photo. Tuzla Plenum session, 'Freedom is My Nation'.